Summary

To start the New Year, Science is pleased to announce the “Science prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction” to highlight outstanding “modules” for teaching introductory college science courses that can readily spread to other settings and schools. Therefore, a unit can neither be unusually expensive nor require highly specialized expertise. To be eligible, a module must provide a coherent piece of coursework in a field such as biology, chemistry, physics, or earth sciences and require 8 to 50 hours of student effort. It should also be free-standing: that is, suitable for teaching as a discrete unit, independent of other modules in the course. How do inquiry-based science modules differ from other science lessons, and why does Science care enough about them to create a special prize?